Last and First Men
(continuous low droning sound)
Two billion years in the future, humanity finds itself on the verge of extinction. All that is left in the world are the strange monuments they have left behind, beaming their messages out into the wilderness of Time and Space.
To say that the film Last And First Men is “artsy” is a bit of an understatement.
Based on a British science fiction novel from 1930, the film is mostly an extended series of stark black and white imagery of brutalist monolithic sculptures, standing alone in dreary fields underneath gray skies, all while ambient music plays and Tilda Swinton’s voiceover acts as the sorrowful spirit of the grotesquely evolved telepathic hivemind that is humanity. Facing extinction two billion years in the future, they send a message back to us of their sad and ignoble end, a coda for a species that is faced not with a bang, but with a resigned sigh.
It is a melancholy film, and a very, very long 72 minutes.
